A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 01 eBook

[3] Madagascar has no pretensions to riches or trade,
and never had; so
that Marco must have been
imposed upon by some Saracen or Arab
mariner. Its size, climate,
and soil certainly fit it for becoming a
place of vast riches and population;
but it is one almost continued
forest, inhabited by numerous
independent and hostile tribes of
barbarians. Of this island,
a minute account will appear in an after
part of this work.—­E.

[4] There are no elephants in Madagascar, yet these
teeth might have been
procured from southern Africa.—­E.

[5] By India Minor he obviously means what is usually
called farther India,
or India beyond the Ganges,
from the frontiers of China to Moabar, or
the north part of the Coromandel
coast, including the islands.—­E.

[6] Abyssinia, here taken in the most extended sense,
including all the
western coast of the Red Sea,
and Eastern Africa.—­E.

[7] This paragraph obviously alludes to the Tartar
kingdom of Siberia.—­E.

[8] The summer in this northern country of the Samojeds
is extremely short;
but the expression here used,
must allude to the long-continued summer
day, when, for several months,
the sun never sets.—­E.

CHAP. XII.

Travels of Oderic of Portenau, into China and the
East, in 1318[1].

INTRODUCTION.

Oderic of Portenau, a minorite friar, travelled into
the eastern countries in the year 1318, accompanied
by several other monks, and penetrated as far as China.
After his return, he dictated, in 1330, the account
of what he had seen during his journey to friar William
de Solona, or Solangna, at Padua, but without order
or arrangement, just as it occurred to his memory.
This traveller has been named by different editors,
Oderic, Oderisius, and Oldericus de Foro Julii, de
Udina, Utinensis, or de Porto Vahonis, or rather Nahonis.
Porto-Nahonis, or Portenau, is the Mutatio ad nonum,
a station or stage which is mentioned in the Itinerarium
Hierosolymitanum, or description of the various routes
to Jerusalem, a work compiled for the use of pilgrims;
and its name is apparently derived from the Kymerian
language, apparently a Celtic dialect, in which port
signifies a stage, station, or resting-place, and
nav or naou signifies nine; Port-nav,
Latinized into Portus naonis, and Frenchified into
Portenau, implies, therefore, the ninth station, and
is at present named Pordanone in the Friul. The
account of his travels, together with his life, are
to be found: in Bolandi Actis Sanctorum, 14to
Januarii; in which he is honoured with the title
of Saint. Oderic died at Udina in 1331.
In 1737, Basilio Asquini, an Italian Barnabite of
Udina, published La Vita e Viaggi del Beato Qderico
da Udihe, probably an Italian translation from